Hi Jim,
Well, I have nothing but absolute respect for BGT as a comercial game
development tool, but there are a few reasons why I personally
wouldn't choose it for an open source project like this. Some reasons
are personal, but the main reason has to do with the spirit of the
open source movement in the first place.

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First of all, when an open source developer decides to create
something as open source usually he or she decides to use a language
and development tools that are an open standard among software
developers. If he/she is a C++ developer they might use C++ with the
gcc/g++ compilers. If he/she is a Java developer they might use the
free tools from Sun or the new Open Java JDK. If he/she is a .Net
developer they'll pick something like Monodevelop over Visual C# just
because it is free and cross-platform. What all of these languages and
tools have in common is they are 100% free, open source, and
cross-platform as well. That's what the spirit of open source is all
about.
With BGT it is a closed source, comertial product, designed for free
or comertial games. Its primary drawback is in demo mode you can write
code, run it from source,but you can't compile and redistribute
anything until you pay $29.00 for the BGT Light version. That's not
bad, financially speaking, but it defeats the purpose of a totally
free and open standard everyone can use without extra expense. That's
why it isn't really for open source developers.
Second of all, is this issue over single-platform verses
multi-platform development. Someone who is a die-hard Windows user
probably won't care if the software is a single-platform or
multi-platform application as long as his/her platform, Windows, is
supported. However, for those of us who choose not to use Windows and
have chosen to use Mac OS, Linux, and so on we feel this general
snubbing of non-Windows platforms is both unfair and unnecessary given
the fact that more and more cross-platform tools and languages are
being developed to handle this problem. So for us it is a big issue.
As a result most open source developers do there best to use a fully
open standard that allows the software to be recompiled or ported to
other operating systems with relative ease.
For example, take Mozilla Firefox. Over the last few years it has shot
up in popularity, and is now rated by many reputable computer experts
to be the leading web browser on the market today. There are two very
important reasons why. One, it is open source so that anyone who has
an idea how to improve the product can submit source code, patches,
upgrades, etc giving it a huge developer base that Microsoft simply
doesn't have. Two, it is supported on several operating systems and
platforms such as Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, etc. As a
result instead of just targeting one single platform and group of
users it pretty much covers them all with a single uniform product
that works exactly the same for each and every target platform and
group. As someone who uses Firefox both on Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux
10 I rather like having the ability to use the same exact application
in both environments.
With a game like this wrestling game we were talking about a text
application kind of like Piledriver or Wrestling League Manager.
Something like that is easy to port from Windows to Linux or Windows
to Mac because all we are dealing with is straight text input/output
rather than platform specific graphical user interfaces like Win32,
GTK+, or coaco. If we want sounds there are cross-platform libraries
like OpenAL which would do the job nicely. I just don't see any need
to tie the game to any specific platform by using a tool like BGT just
because it might be easier to use.
As I said earlier BGT is nice, but it goes against the spirit of open
source. With open source the general idea is you write the source
code, make it available to the public, and then they can do what they
want with it. They can build a version for their Apple IPhone,
recompile it for Mac OS, I can compile a copy for Linux, Windows users
can compile a version for Windows, and everybody is happy. There is no
complaint of this or that platform or group of users being ignored or
snubbed.
Finally, there is the target group itself. You know, up until now I've
focussed mainly on accessible audio games. This is a little different.
By being text-based it could become a mainstream product. I.E. someone
sighted might choose to play it the way many sighted players play
text-based games like the PK Girl, Zork, etc. Although, killer
graphics etc seems to be the norm as far as mainstream public goes I
know many sighted people who still like text games too. So we might
find out this game has a bigger player base than something like
Mysteries of the Ancients that was only designed specifically for a
blind target group. So I don't know if tying it to a blind specific
product like BGT is a good idea with that in mind.
Smile.
On 4/7/11, Jim Kitchen <j...@kitchensinc.net> wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
>
> Today if one is going to write an open source blind accessible game maybe it
> should use the most popular easy to use available tool. I'm thinking that
> would be BGT. You know personally I am into VB6, but that is not so easy to
> find. I have not looked at BGT myself because I have always used Basic, but
> BGT sounds like a good choice for a community project.
>
> BFN
>
> Jim
>
> When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a
> nail.
>
> j...@kitchensinc.net
> http://www.kitchensinc.net
> (440) 286-6920
> Chardon Ohio USA
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